10.10.3 Combo Update breaks Office 2011

[Randydid]

Hello,

I just finished updating my NBI to work with the Early 2015 MBA's. Got that done and booting on the latest hardware (thanks @bentoms !!).

I then started to do a refresh on our Yosemite 10.10.2 image. I applied the 10.10.3 Combo update and when my test machine rebooted, Office reports "The Office for Mac installation did not complete successfully because there was a problem with the installer." I Googled that and found the symptoms here to be true: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2476492

Skeptical, I re-imaged again and reapplied the 10.10.3 update to be sure. It is reproducible. I have tried copying files to a USB thumb drive and and replacing them but they disappear after a reboot.

Office on my 10.10.2 is at patch level 14.4.7 I was going to update to 14.4.8 after 10.10.3 updated. I cannot figure out why the com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper.plist and com.microsoft.office.licensing.helper are suddenly getting deleted.

TIA,

/randy

[bentoms]

@Diddel I can't see why the combo would make a difference, but with 10.10.3 available via the App Store.. Why not deploy an OS.dmg of that instead of 10.10.2 & then updating to 10.10.3?

[Randydid]

Let me clarify, I am not talking about my NBI but my production Yosemite image apart from the NBI boot issues I reported earlier this week. I was just thanking your @bentoms for the AutoCasperNBI utility-a REAL time saver!!

While not a truly monolithic image, I created a custom image with Office for Mac 2011 baked in as we have a site license and every machine gets a copy here. In updating that with the Combo Update, Office 2011 breaks. Also, somewhere along my journey, I was told to use the 'whole enchilada' when doing .dot releases of OS X.

I will drop a fresh image and try updating to 10.10.3 from the App Store just to see if it breaks.

/randy

[bentoms]

@Diddel I was talking about the OS.dmg too & not the NBI!

When a new App Store release comes out, we create an AutoDMG OS.dmg using that, & swap out the old OS.dmg with this newer one.

For Office, we deploy the volume licensed PKG when imaging. This is downloaded from the MS licensing portal, no repacking needed.

[Randydid]

Yes, I want to get to that point-a thin(er) image process but since everything gets Office, I just bake it in. If I actually had access to our licensing portal (long story-political), I could do what you do too. I the newest Office media version I have is SP2. Yes, I could chain all of the updates and prioritize them but in the interest of time and simplicity, one update of the image a semester works for us.

But, back to the original question... I wonder why the Combo Update is whacking the license files.

/randy

[bpavlov]

Not relevant to the Combo update, but if you did need to re-deploy Office to make sure that it's licensed: https://derflounder.wordpress.com/2014/04/09/creating-an-office-2011-sp-4-14-4-1-installer/

[Randydid]

UPDATE:

Running Update OS X 10.10.3 from within the App Store breaks Office as well. I guess I will reinstall Office from scratch and apply the updates all the way to 14.4.8. I would still like to know why this is happening.

Thanks @bpavlov good information!

/randy

[htse]

I re-deployed a system with OS X 10.10.3 from NetRestore just this morning, and installed Office 14.3.9 then applied the update to 14.4.8 through Casper Policies this morning, without issues.

[RobertHammen]

@Diddel This has to be something in your environment or in your deployment methodology. Strongly suggest a modular approach and don't "bake in" Office.

If you have a Volume License Installer that's 14.1.0 or later (last one I saw was 14.3.0), you just need to apply the 14.4.8 update afterwards.

I have clients that imaged 10.10.3 and installed Office 14.3.0 + 14.4.8 update, other clients already at 10.10.2/14.4.8 and updated to 10.10.3. In either case, zero issues.

[calumhunter]

+1 on what @RobertHammen said
I just deployed an image of 10.10.0 with office 14.4.6 baked in ( I didn't create it! Don't judge!) applied the combo updater to 10.10.3 and office is still licenced as expected.

[guidotti]

Ours is also licensed after 10.10.3 Combo Update deployed through Self-Service. We use a separate licensing PKG if that matters.

[Randydid]

Resolved.

I went and removed office as outlined here https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/2398768 on a freshly dropped image with 10.10.3 combo applied.

I tried to reinstall Office back onto the Mac using our Admin user. The install files refused to be installed. Hmmm. So I dropped a fresh image again with 10.10.3 applied, removed office as noted above. This is where it got interesting. I decided enable the root user, logged in as our Admin. Initiated the Office install process and authenticated as root instead of the Admin, rebooted. Office came up licensed and happy. I then applied 14.4.8, rebooted and it was still happy.

I think I know the cause but I am not 100% certain. My theory is that permissions go sideways after the 10.10.3 on my image for some reason. Thanks for the feedback that stated there were no issues in your environments.

YES, YES! I am slowly making my way toward 100% modular images. You should have seen what my predecessor left me with. I am down to just Office baked into my image and after this, I will be omitting that from my next ground-up build.

Thanks for the help everyone.

/randy

[Kaltsas]

I have a package built that dumps the license file back on a machine. There's been a few times that VL file gets doiked for some reason.